Broken windows and electric cars
Posted: November 30th, 2006 by Thomas L. KnappAmid continuing car problems, Tamara and I have been considering just going all out and purchasing a newer vehicle … and we have a hybrid in mind. We’ve borrowed a friend’s Toyota Prius a couple of times, and it seems to be a fine car.
Because we’ve been considering hybrids, it caught my attention when GM announced that it plans to introduce a “plug-in” hybrid in the near future. And within the announcement article, a particular claim caught my eye:
Environmentalists have become plug-in advocates, saying most motorists commute less than 50 miles to and from work each day and could do that on batteries alone without consuming any gas and without creating any emissions.
This is plainly incorrect.
Some studies have shown that “plug-in” hybrids reduce overall greenhouse/polluting emissions, even if they’re plugged in to electrical outlets fed by coal-powered plants. But it’s absurd to claim that they eliminate such emissions.
Frederic Bastiat (and, later, Henry Hazlitt) explained the phenomenon at work here: It’s a sort of abbreviated version of the “broken window” fallacy: A failure to account for what is not seen as well as what is seen.
The owner of a “plug-in” hybrid will not see a tailpipe belching smoke from the back of his new car. Instead, that smoke will have already plumed out of a stack tens or hundreds of miles away at the plant which produces the power that comes down the line to his house and out the electric plug to his car’s battery. He sees a car that produces no emissions in his driveway or behind him at a stoplight. He does not see the power plant that produces emissions in order to make it possible for him to drive that car.
That doesn’t mean that “plug-ins” aren’t a good idea, of course … but let’s not kid ourselves about their limitations.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Of course you’re right that a plug-in hybrid produces pollutants, just not at the point of use. However, if the electricity plant uses renewable energy, such geothermal, wind or solar, the emissions are minimal indeed. “We’ll never solve the problem of transportation until we reconnect the transportation and electricity infrastructures. There’s not enough liquid fuels,” says my boss, Travis Bradford, whose Grist interview you’ve posted elsewhere on your blog - http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/11/30/roberts/.
December 5th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Kate,
Exactly!
I was trying to make my point very narrow — basically, that we need to look past our noses (or the backs of our cars) to figure out the consequences of what we’re doing. We could all feel really good about ourselves if we used plug-in hybrids, but if it’s the same old coal-fired power plants at the other end of the plugs, we aren’t at “zero emissions” or anything close (although some studies suggest that even going that far would REDUCE emissions overall).
I look forward to reading your boss’s book, by the way. I’m a big fan of solar and other energy sources for reasons that he alludes to BEYOND emissions reductions (decentralization and reducing dependence on an infrastructure-intenstive wire grid being among them — I just went through my second multi-day blackout in five months here in St. Louis).
Regards,
Tom Knapp